How Wheat Domesticated Us
Humans lived a relatively easy hunter gatherer life, until, about 10,000 years ago. Then we began to invest more and more time and effort to cultivate wheat. Within a few millennia, humans were spending most of their time caring for wheat plants. It was hard, as wheat is finicky. Wheat is thirsty, so humans lugged water or dug channels to irrigate it. Wheat is defenseless against critters that like to eat it, so humans defended it against rabbits, locusts, and deer.
It likes nutrients, so humans collected feces to scatter it over wheat fields. Wheat got sick, so humans kept a constant watch for blight and worms. It does not like to share space with other plants, so humans spent hours stooped over to remove weeds. Wheat does not like rocks or pebbles, so humans wrecked their backs to clear wheat fields.
Over millions of years, our bodies evolved to climb trees or chase gazelles in the African Savannah. Our bodies did not evolve to bend over wheat fields to clear, weed, hoe, and water them, or perform many of the tasks needed to care for that plant. Yet, wheat convinced us to do just that, and accept the resultant hernias, slipped disks, plus neck, knee, back, and foot pains as an acceptable price to pay for that plant.
Seen from that perspective, the argument that it was wheat that domesticated humans, not humans who domesticated wheat, is not farfetched. The very word “domesticate” is derived from the Latin root domus, or house. Wheat convinced our hunter gatherer ancestors to settle down in houses near their farms so they could be closer to wheat.
